“Socially Conscious Architecture”: Shigeru Ban Wins Pritzker Prize

Since at least the invention of moveable screens and sliding paper doors, and more recently the Metabolism movement, Japanese architects have been masters of modular design,Shigeru Ban designs temporary housing — even a so-called Cardboard Cathedral” — for disaster victims at home and abroad. He has, however, taken his modular concept further, designing space-shifting houses and a mobile art gallery — the Nomadic Museum, currently on tour with Gregory Colbert’s “Ashes and Snow” exhibition, currently on world tour. I saw “Ashes and Snow” when it played in Tokyo back in 2007… and still meditate to the DVD (or, more usually, lucid dream through a nap).